I've spoken to multiple freelancers to learn that the best way to actually find good clients that pay well is through word of mouth. There is inherent trust in the relationship when someone comes in as a referrals vs when they don't.
And that trust really changes the game in terms of how much more comfortable they are in terms of how they engage with you. They'll trust you with the project because they trust the referring source.
The alternative is spending a significant amount of time showing your skillsets to clients that don't know about you. Which means you may have to warm them over a few projects before they actually fully trust you. While starting off job sites maybe the only way to build a portfolio but we believe that everybody inherently has a professional network of good relationships they can tap onto, like old colleagues or friends from college that work in a similar industry.
[1] Here's a post I wrote about the ways different ways experienced freelancers find clients and most of them said that their best work came through word of mouth https://freelancefish.com/things-we-learnt-about-finding-cli...
[2] If you want to bootstrap your referral network, a friend and I are working on a tool that helps freelancers find work through word of mouth by reminding you to stay in touch with people and helping them in meaningful ways. It also encourages you to clearly articulate what you do and how the same people can help you in return. We just launched the beta a couple of weeks back and are slowly adding people onto the platform https://clienttree.io